If you don’t know how to spell something, the easiest way to have a bash at it is to say it out loud. Mind you, that might not help if you have got a thick regional accent….
Nottingham is a funny place for accents. Ask any impressionist to do a Nottingham voice, and they probably won’t be able to (in the way that you could do a Brummie or a Scouser, for example). Saying that, having lived here for the best part of a decade there is a very distinct and very clear dialect spoken in these parts.
A friend of mine – the editor of Nottingham’s fine Left Lion publication – prides himself on preserving the Nottingham dialect. He can be regularly heard using the local word “rammel” (which means ‘rubbish’ in the sense that a ‘rammel TV show’ would be something like Bargain Hunt or Cash In The Attic) and, of course, the local favourite ‘duckeh’. Everyone locally is addressed as ‘duckeh’ – man, woman or child.
If you want to try and perfect the Nottingham voice, the phrase that pays is this one:
“Toneh Hadleh aht eh Spandah Balleh”.
(Clearly, the aforementioned Toneh Hadleh isn’t from Nottingham – it is a phrase which identifies some of the key requirements of Notts speak in one handy sentence).
My local Left Lion guru also runs a weekly pub quiz, in which his round entitled ‘On This Day In Istreh’ has become something of a local favourite….
Anyway. Why, you wonder, am I giving you a potted history of the Nottingham dialect? Well, going back to my original point, when you can’t spell something, you might try and say it out loud. That is the only explanation I have for the following sign which I saw in the window of Ladbrokes in the centre of Nottingham this week. Someone has clearly not been 100% sure how to spell the central European country, and so has said it out loud in a thick Nottingham accent.
Priceless.
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Nick Parkhouse is a professional writer. If you need web copy, articles, books or press releases, get in touch with Nick now at info@nickparkhouse.com
Nick’s first book, 101 Forgotten Pop Hits of the 1980s, is also now available through Author House, Amazon and Waterstones.
